mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-31 06:34 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-31 06:34 pm
Entry tags:
Reflections on 2025:
2025 was a year! Another one!
The change from one year to another is an arbitrary distinction, but a genuine cultural one, and it’s a fitting time to do a bit of an inventory of how things are going, and what I want to do going forward.
There were good and bad things about 2025, as is almost always the case.
The hardest thing for us was losing Cy. I miss him so much.
I’m not sure there was a single “best” moment, but Alex and I did go do a lot of things this year that were really fun. We went to a lantern festival and to a really cool Halloween event, we saw the northern lights for a second year in a row, we made a lot of time for hiking. At least the hiking was also something that Bella got to often come do with us, which was also fun. She’s also continued doing FastCAT, which she seems to really enjoy, and has started to improve at.
Most years, at the beginning I set intentions for the year to come. (It’s semantic, but “intentions” feels better to me than setting “resolutions,” haha.)
Starting off 2025, I was not feeling terribly hopeful. The whole political and social landscape of the US felt (and still feels) nearly insurmountably awful, and it was hard to feel like focusing on personal minutiae was a worthwhile concern.
Even so, setting those intentions meant, to me, that I was promising myself that I was sticking around and doing what I could to make my life (and maybe even the lives of those around me!) better. Even if the things themselves were small, just sticking around and surviving and aiming for “better” was worthwhile.
As usual, I met with somewhat mixed success.
(I split these into categories based on the habits that I track for myself.)
Work:
- Maintain my improved call rates
I did succeed in maintaining my improved call rates. I’ve consistently hit the standard!
Household stuff:
- Try once again to do some weekly cleaning/organizing tasks
Eh… Same issue as before, where I still mostly would do a small flurry of cleaning, and then do nothing for weeks. I’d also wind up just repeating a lot of the same tasks as they needed doing again, and never getting to others.
Physical activity:
- Move more, find something I can do that I don’t hate
- Maybe hike more, go out to clubs more
We did a great job of going out and hiking more! We went almost every week on at least one of my days off, and when I took a longer stretch off for a week or so over the summer, we did things more days than not. I’m a little frustrated that despite that, I don’t feel like I’m in any better shape now than I was last year.
We did not do any real clubbing or anything. I want to go, but not alone, and Alex (despite being the one who used to want to do it five nights a week!) has started to feel anxious and uncomfortable in those settings, even when we went to a handful of concerts. I miss it, but also don’t want him to do things he’s unhappy with.
Writing:
- Write 75000 words for the year, as declared in both![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
getyourwordsout and inkingitout
- Continue trying to find a method that allows me to work on more than one project at once
- Finish at least one multi-chapter work
I did meet and surpass my 75000 word goal! Unfortunately, very little of that really wound up being on fiction. I still count the writing I do on reviews and things toward the wordcount, but that was really the bulk of what I did.
The attempt to work on multiple projects is… ongoing. I think I’ve found a fairly good method, or at least one that I want to try, but I haven’t really gotten far enough on anything to see for sure whether it feels workable for me.
I did do a fair amount of work on one multi-chapter work around the mid-year, but ultimately decided it needed a lot more developmental work, and abandoned the draft. I did not finish anything, alas.
Meta stuff:
- Download more media that I want to keep copies of
- Better organize my own tagging and bookmarks
- Wrangle my email inboxes
I did download at least a few things that I wanted to, though I also waited a bit too long on others. I’d wanted to make sure I had copies of all of Seanan McGuire’s Patreon stories… and then some issue with Patreon meant that a lot of the older stories disappeared. I haven’t checked recently to see if that glitch was fixed, but there may be stuff I can’t access at this point. (Much of it I did print out for my mom, so I can at least maybe make copies of her copies, ha.)
I really didn’t do any organizational stuff in terms of tagging.
I did try to wrangle my email a bit. I’ve gone from 20000+ unread things per tab to a few hundred to around a thousand in each category. It’s hard to stay on top of when I get hundreds of emails per day. I (foolishly) subscribed to a BUNCH of author newsletters, wanting to find non social-media ways to keep up with people… but then got super overwhelmed and couldn’t make myself open any of them, so they just keep building up.
Personal writing:
- Continue keeping up with DW pretty regularly
I did keep up on Dreamwidth! I’m glad that I’ve managed to post fairly consistently without feeling like I MUST post every single day.
Other creative things:
- Take advantage of opportunities for artistic things, like taking pictures on hikes
Other creative things… I haven’t done a ton, but I did take a lot of pictures when we were out on hikes, and that was nice. I’ve also done another reading page that let me do some drawing.
Reading:
- Read at least 25 books
Reading was maybe my most successful category for the year. I wanted to read at least 25 books, and I’ll be ending the year at 68! I’m very happy that I read so much more than felt doable for me.
Attention to media:
- Be deliberate about watching things I want to see
- Figure out how to carve out time for podcasts again
… Eh, mixed results on being deliberate about it. We’ve watched a lot of stuff that mostly falls under the “background noise” category (Alex watches a lot of storm chasing, urban ex, paranormal investigations, things like that), but I’m also pretty okay with that. Time management being what it is, I really don’t have time to *be* super mindful toward hours of media every night, if I also want to do writing and reading and things. There are a few movies and things I’ve been excited for, and it’s been nice when I get to see those.
I managed to keep up with Dracula Daily, but that was the only podcast type thing I listened to, which was helped because I could follow along with text. I really want to catch up on Within the Wires, but audio remains hard for me to focus on.
Video games:
- Just let myself play them!
While Taylor and I played through quite a lot of Final Fantasy XIV together, I really didn’t play much at all on my own. It sucks, because I really do want to, but it feels like I never have the time. Contrary to my goal of letting myself play them when I want, I do always feel guilty and like I should be doing something else if I even *think* about playing something.
Social interaction:
- Participate more in DW comms
- Participate in Discord servers
- Maintain a presence on tumblr and Bluesky, including posting my own things
- Spend time with Taylor
My social intention intentions were the ones I felt the shakiest on… with good reason. I really did not participate much in DW communities at all, though I did take a few hosting weeks forwritethisfanfic. I definitely didn’t participate on Discord. While I stuck around on tumblr, reblogging as usual, I pretty much ignored Bluesky, and didn’t end up making or sharing anything of my own there.
I did spend more time with Taylor, which was great!
While there were some things I still struggled with or didn’t quite manage to do, I feel good about the year. I’m sort of expecting that my next year will look fairly similar: a lot of what I succeeded at will be things I want to continue doing; the things I didn’t succeed at may be things I want to make another attempt at.
(My 2025 has ended on a fairly good note, eating delicious Indian food, ha. We are not going out to do anything. It was tempting to attempt a club night, but eh… braving all the drunks in the club and on the road sounds terrible, haha. I’m planning to take a nap, lol. Living it up!)
The change from one year to another is an arbitrary distinction, but a genuine cultural one, and it’s a fitting time to do a bit of an inventory of how things are going, and what I want to do going forward.
There were good and bad things about 2025, as is almost always the case.
The hardest thing for us was losing Cy. I miss him so much.
I’m not sure there was a single “best” moment, but Alex and I did go do a lot of things this year that were really fun. We went to a lantern festival and to a really cool Halloween event, we saw the northern lights for a second year in a row, we made a lot of time for hiking. At least the hiking was also something that Bella got to often come do with us, which was also fun. She’s also continued doing FastCAT, which she seems to really enjoy, and has started to improve at.
Most years, at the beginning I set intentions for the year to come. (It’s semantic, but “intentions” feels better to me than setting “resolutions,” haha.)
Starting off 2025, I was not feeling terribly hopeful. The whole political and social landscape of the US felt (and still feels) nearly insurmountably awful, and it was hard to feel like focusing on personal minutiae was a worthwhile concern.
Even so, setting those intentions meant, to me, that I was promising myself that I was sticking around and doing what I could to make my life (and maybe even the lives of those around me!) better. Even if the things themselves were small, just sticking around and surviving and aiming for “better” was worthwhile.
As usual, I met with somewhat mixed success.
I set myself 20 intentions for 2025:
(I split these into categories based on the habits that I track for myself.)
Work:
- Maintain my improved call rates
I did succeed in maintaining my improved call rates. I’ve consistently hit the standard!
Household stuff:
- Try once again to do some weekly cleaning/organizing tasks
Eh… Same issue as before, where I still mostly would do a small flurry of cleaning, and then do nothing for weeks. I’d also wind up just repeating a lot of the same tasks as they needed doing again, and never getting to others.
Physical activity:
- Move more, find something I can do that I don’t hate
- Maybe hike more, go out to clubs more
We did a great job of going out and hiking more! We went almost every week on at least one of my days off, and when I took a longer stretch off for a week or so over the summer, we did things more days than not. I’m a little frustrated that despite that, I don’t feel like I’m in any better shape now than I was last year.
We did not do any real clubbing or anything. I want to go, but not alone, and Alex (despite being the one who used to want to do it five nights a week!) has started to feel anxious and uncomfortable in those settings, even when we went to a handful of concerts. I miss it, but also don’t want him to do things he’s unhappy with.
Writing:
- Write 75000 words for the year, as declared in both
getyourwordsout and inkingitout- Continue trying to find a method that allows me to work on more than one project at once
- Finish at least one multi-chapter work
I did meet and surpass my 75000 word goal! Unfortunately, very little of that really wound up being on fiction. I still count the writing I do on reviews and things toward the wordcount, but that was really the bulk of what I did.
The attempt to work on multiple projects is… ongoing. I think I’ve found a fairly good method, or at least one that I want to try, but I haven’t really gotten far enough on anything to see for sure whether it feels workable for me.
I did do a fair amount of work on one multi-chapter work around the mid-year, but ultimately decided it needed a lot more developmental work, and abandoned the draft. I did not finish anything, alas.
Meta stuff:
- Download more media that I want to keep copies of
- Better organize my own tagging and bookmarks
- Wrangle my email inboxes
I did download at least a few things that I wanted to, though I also waited a bit too long on others. I’d wanted to make sure I had copies of all of Seanan McGuire’s Patreon stories… and then some issue with Patreon meant that a lot of the older stories disappeared. I haven’t checked recently to see if that glitch was fixed, but there may be stuff I can’t access at this point. (Much of it I did print out for my mom, so I can at least maybe make copies of her copies, ha.)
I really didn’t do any organizational stuff in terms of tagging.
I did try to wrangle my email a bit. I’ve gone from 20000+ unread things per tab to a few hundred to around a thousand in each category. It’s hard to stay on top of when I get hundreds of emails per day. I (foolishly) subscribed to a BUNCH of author newsletters, wanting to find non social-media ways to keep up with people… but then got super overwhelmed and couldn’t make myself open any of them, so they just keep building up.
Personal writing:
- Continue keeping up with DW pretty regularly
I did keep up on Dreamwidth! I’m glad that I’ve managed to post fairly consistently without feeling like I MUST post every single day.
Other creative things:
- Take advantage of opportunities for artistic things, like taking pictures on hikes
Other creative things… I haven’t done a ton, but I did take a lot of pictures when we were out on hikes, and that was nice. I’ve also done another reading page that let me do some drawing.
Reading:
- Read at least 25 books
Reading was maybe my most successful category for the year. I wanted to read at least 25 books, and I’ll be ending the year at 68! I’m very happy that I read so much more than felt doable for me.
Attention to media:
- Be deliberate about watching things I want to see
- Figure out how to carve out time for podcasts again
… Eh, mixed results on being deliberate about it. We’ve watched a lot of stuff that mostly falls under the “background noise” category (Alex watches a lot of storm chasing, urban ex, paranormal investigations, things like that), but I’m also pretty okay with that. Time management being what it is, I really don’t have time to *be* super mindful toward hours of media every night, if I also want to do writing and reading and things. There are a few movies and things I’ve been excited for, and it’s been nice when I get to see those.
I managed to keep up with Dracula Daily, but that was the only podcast type thing I listened to, which was helped because I could follow along with text. I really want to catch up on Within the Wires, but audio remains hard for me to focus on.
Video games:
- Just let myself play them!
While Taylor and I played through quite a lot of Final Fantasy XIV together, I really didn’t play much at all on my own. It sucks, because I really do want to, but it feels like I never have the time. Contrary to my goal of letting myself play them when I want, I do always feel guilty and like I should be doing something else if I even *think* about playing something.
Social interaction:
- Participate more in DW comms
- Participate in Discord servers
- Maintain a presence on tumblr and Bluesky, including posting my own things
- Spend time with Taylor
My social intention intentions were the ones I felt the shakiest on… with good reason. I really did not participate much in DW communities at all, though I did take a few hosting weeks for
writethisfanfic. I definitely didn’t participate on Discord. While I stuck around on tumblr, reblogging as usual, I pretty much ignored Bluesky, and didn’t end up making or sharing anything of my own there. I did spend more time with Taylor, which was great!
While there were some things I still struggled with or didn’t quite manage to do, I feel good about the year. I’m sort of expecting that my next year will look fairly similar: a lot of what I succeeded at will be things I want to continue doing; the things I didn’t succeed at may be things I want to make another attempt at.
(My 2025 has ended on a fairly good note, eating delicious Indian food, ha. We are not going out to do anything. It was tempting to attempt a club night, but eh… braving all the drunks in the club and on the road sounds terrible, haha. I’m planning to take a nap, lol. Living it up!)
no subject
I hope the coming year hold many great things for you.
no subject
Your low key New Year's Eve sounds delightful! =D (I absolutely love chicken makhani and samosas haha...)